The restaurant name itself already sounds catchy: Drago Centro, Downtown Los Angeles, CA. This is one delicious Italian restaurant that serves great food and provides excellent service to all customers of all ages, but can be a bit pricey for the average folk. Thankfully, this restaurant participates in dineLA 3 times a year! One thing I love about this restaurant is the excellent wine pairing suggestions that comes with each course! Each wine pairing at each course complemented the dishes very well and surely did its job getting me tipsy! (I turn red, big surprise :O)

To start off…

complimentary warm, freshly baked bread with extra virgin olive oil (sorry guys! I forgot what kind of bread it is :() I LOVE it when restaurants serve their bread warm and crispy. There’s no point in serving cold bread.

pappardelle, roasted pheasant, morel mushrooms – Yes, it’s a vegetarian dish, but it is so good! And you do get ample protein from the mushrooms 😀 The texture of the pappardelle was cooked perfectly and I personally like it when it’s “floppy” trying to get on my fork :O Always an interesting choice of pasta noodle once in a while for a change!

tagliolini, pork sausage, rapini, pecorino romano – a special type of pasta noodle that is very similar to the fettuccine, but skinnier. Tagliatelle originates from a region of Italy called Romagna and Marche. There’s some trivia for ya! I didn’t even know this type of pasta existed until I dined here!

pork belly, wild mushrooms, farro salsa verde – I personally don’t think anyone can top Asians at cooking pork belly but this place did a very good job! For once, I felt like I was eating “healthy” pork belly that still retained its fatty moisture, texture, and flavor. The salsa verde was a nice fusion to the dish!

arctic char, firm polenta, little gem lettuce, caesar dressing – what was AMAZING from this fish is that the skin was perfectly broiled to have that crispy, thin sear of fish skin on top. This complemented with the contrasting soft, tender, moist flakes of fish that just falls off while you dish your fork into the skin layers…

dark chocolate tart, strawberry, basil puree, fresh cream

vanilla panna cotta, pistachio granola, raspberry, peach sorbet – I like this! It was so fun to eat because I didn’t even know where to start! What caught my eye was the white chocolate kiss right in the middle 🙂

So if you guys ever wanna try this place, dineLA is the perfect opportunity to do so without doing massive damage to your wallet! 🙂 I think the next upcoming dineLA should be coming this summer in July ish? (Same as last year I hope!)

Have a good weekend guys! Hope you guys all eat something yummy <3